In the dying days of the Brown government Labour MP Ron Scuttle offers us a weekly peek at his diary . . .

Less than a week to conference, and I'm still wondering if it wouldn't be safer to pull a sickie. What's in it for me? Other than the sex, obviously, if the relevant honourable lady turns up. Free drinks. A chance to suck up to Alan Johnson. And Cruddas. The Milibands, if time? Press excitement about my intellectual contribution: After Triangulation – New Kinds of Shapes for a New Kind of Politics? Business/union contacts to groom re job prospects. Best of all: escape from Diane.

Against: Free drinks (age of austerity, must keep head down). Gordon Brown, danger of reputation contamination through contact with. After Triangulation clashes with the RSPCA party. The cost (still claimable?). Worst of all: risk of leaving the useless Diane unsupervised. That's something the papers never mention when they start banging on about how sleazy, unfair, etc it is when MPs' spouses double up as employees. What makes them think we have a choice?

Plus, they're unsackable. Promotion, Diane now says she wants. Some "input". Not "challenging" enough, apparently, being paid £40,000 a year to do sod all in her own garage. Unless you count snarling "he's out" three days a week. Though, to hand it to her, there was that time a couple of years ago when she had to add, "I have never had the pleasure of meeting the lady." So it's part of the never-ending loyalty payback that I can't stop her posting her heartwarming new column, "The Things Kids Say!", on what's meant to be my constituency website. Yesterday's highlight: "Mummie, are dere Conservatives in heaven?"

It's all thanks to Sarah Brown, of course, with her tweeting and cuddly grandparents and "can I just say a few words?" before hubby comes on and hammers the next nail into the collective coffin. Save your breath, love, they should tell her, if you wanted to give him a human face, you're three or four decades too late. But that's not what I say to Diane. "I know Sarah Brown," I lie, "I've worked with Sarah Brown. Diane, you're no Sarah Brown." Then I ask her, in her role as constituency secretary, to sort out some clean shirts for conference.